Friday, October 10, 2014

Magic Remembered

We went down to the sea in the holidays, my parents coming with us for five slow and lovely days.

With limited internet, and a promise to Beloved to try to keep the camera from harm and not take it near the sand, the world seemed more immediate, the days lazy and gentle.

The sky was blue and the kids stopped wearing their shoes on the first day - it took me three days to start leaving my flip-flops at the house and walk bare-foot along the orange clay roads and pathways.

My memories are of my little ones playing on the shoreline in sun-glitter and blue-water and gold-sand.

My photos are mainly from one walk on a cool grey morning - we hadn't meant to go down to the beach, but the sea draws us all closer. Poppet wore her 'Princess' dress, and walked like a fairytale along all the much-loved pathways of my childhood.
















Sunday, October 5, 2014

Littlest: Five Months



Our dearest Little One, 

You are just passed five months now and the sweetest little armful of cuddles. Your little fingers and toes are all plumped, you have chubby little cheeks and the most delightful giggling gurgle.

You are sitting up now, with a tiny bit of propping and are very proud of your achievement - although you still prefer it when someone helps you stand. You continue to be our little drool-a-tron, soaking through four or five bibs a day and at least a couple of changes, but there is yet no real sign of teeth, although you busily gum everything you can lay your searching little fingers on. You explore our faces, stick your fingers in our mouths and feel our teeth, try to gum at our noses, lunging at them with your victory grin. 


Is it wrong that my heart gives a little stutter when I see you playing with one of my books as you sit in my lap as I read, your tiny fingers busy exploring the cover, the pages, you pause for a quick taste - hmm, fantasy book- then look up with a grin. 

This morning Poppet had you on her lap while she strummed Sprocket's ukelele and you were in heaven - to be with one of the big kids and a big sound-maker. I don't think you believed the world could get any better. Except of course for the milk. (She says smuggly...) Luckily Poppet's song this morning was cheerier than last nights - this morning it was all about brothers and sisters, last night it was all about death. "Everybody dies. Everybody dies, Everybody's born, Everybody dies, Everybody dies. But God lives forever..."

I have missed you this last week - I've been sick, first with gastro, then a leurgy, and we stayed at your Nana and Grandpa's while I recovered. You're getting quite blase about the trains going past their house, which used to enthrall you, but your Grandpa taught you how to high-five (which greatly entertained me as growing up your grandpa would not allow us to use any 'Americanism's and was quick to remind us to use proper English. Again, slightly entertaining coming from a Glaswegian.) You thought it was wonderful that there was a game you could play and, with great effort, and not a lot of co-ordination, you would slowly move your hand up to meet his.

The week before we had a perfect week by the sea, again with your Nana and Papa, with some of the most beautiful blue-sky weather and you put your little feet in the sand and we lowered your little toes in the water and you studied the waves with fascination.

Increasingly you have no patience for being inside. You want to be outside, studying sky and trees and hopfully coming upon passers by to practice your grins on and coo as they comment on your big eyes and cheery dissposition. You'll just about stand being inside if Poppet or Sprocket are about, but if it's just your Daddy or I you soon lose interest and want to be outside. You howl if your brother and sister leave the room and I don't follow them. You have very clear ideas about your place in the world, and basically it is with them. Preferably outside with them. 

I am a little worried that the slightly larger age gap will mean that you will be forever trailing after them, but hopefully you and Poppet will be able to play together - if only as queen and lady-in-waiting... If your adoration continues I suspect you will have nothing against playing lady-in-waiting... I can easily see your sister as Titania and you as one of her attending fairies...You are talking lots at the moment, oohing and aaahing and making strange indescribably adorable little gurgles and squeaks. They are incredibly sweet sounds and I will miss them when you begin to talk. (I would swear you say 'hello' and 'Lily'... but I am a little biased!)

We are starting to pack up to move, Little one. There are boxes all through the house and I am jettisoning things dailyIt is strange to think you'll have no memory of this, your first home. The roses, the blosssom, the all-on-top-of-each-other squeeze.
 I find it hard to believe that it's only sixty days until we fly up north for the forseeable future. You are still so wheezy the doctor has put you on ventolin - I hate seeing your little face beneath the spacer - but I so hope that it will clear up when we move. Your Daddy hadn't had asthma since he was a kid before we moved to the valley.

Little one, I didn't think it possible but we love you more and more each day, and each tiny millimetre of you is pink and white perfection. I think I drop a kiss on you at least once every hour, because it is just impossible not to. Your smile lights up our lives and no one could fail to laugh when you laugh. We love to watch your eyes take in the world, look from place to place and back again, to see your fingers feel out the world, to see you pull at your brother's top to get his attention, hold to your sisters fingers. I love to watch your sleeping face as you sleep-feed, the delicate sweep of lashes and soft-tinted busily sucking lips.

Each day you interact more and more and you are so eager to be one of us, to be up and about and one of the pack, your gigles and exuberant grins of triumphant when you succeed are such a delight.


Our Lilli-Pilli, our Littlest we're so glad you're you. We're so glad that you are ours.